Howell urges Allen committee to block names reporting

The Honorable Sandy Allen
Chairman, Committee on Human Services
Council of the District of Columbia
441 4th Street, N.W.
Washington, D.C. 20001

Dear Sandy:

We are very much distressed to learn that Mr. Ron Lewis, chief of the
Agency for
HIV/AIDS, testified before your committee on April 1 that AHA is still
on course to impose
by September a names reporting system for people testing positive for
HIV.

This is a shocking development. The Mayor's office told us in January
that Mayor
Williams had ordered Mr. Lewis to put the brakes on any such plans. Mr.
Lewis' plans also
defy the Council's public opposition to a names reporting system, and
especially your own
plans to hold a public hearing on the subject. We appreciate your
opposition to a names
reporting system, which you repeated in no uncertain terms to Mr. Lewis
during his
testimony.

Mr. Lewis' insubordination is intolerable. Clearly it is primarily the
Mayor's duty to
rein in Mr. Lewis once and for all. But since that has not yet
happened, we strongly urge the
Committee on Human Services to adopt an amendment to the FY 2000 budget
for the
Department of Health forbidding the implementation of a names reporting
system. A similar
amendment should be added to any FY 1999 supplemental budget request
that may be
forthcoming.

We regret such steps seem necessary. But perhaps your committee's
decisive action
during next week's mark-up will help to spur Mayor Williams into
asserting control over his
own bureaucrats.